Oct 20, 2012

A perfect match for a Nobel

Prof Roth does three things that are far too rare in economics. First, he really engages with the anthropological reality of how individual markets work, rather than immediately leaping to an abstract model. Second, he recognises ethical or cultural constraints – we don’t like the idea of buying and selling kidneys, for instance. Too many economists have simply argued that the constraints make no sense, shrugged and walked away. Prof Roth accepted them as a fact of life and worked around them.

That is from a very good article by Tim Harford on this year Nobel Laureates in economics. Read it all, here.